Students fight Board of Regents fee hikes

On Feb. 9, the Progressive Student Alliance led a group of protestors from Library Plaza on the main campus of Georgia State to the Trinity building, where the Board of Regents holds their monthly meetings, on Trinity Avenue to protest the $200 in fees added to students' accounts over the past year.

At 12:15 p.m., protestors began to gather in the plaza holding signs that read things such as "$200 will buy a month of groceries," and "$100, $200, $400, $800, where will it stop?"
The PSA rallied in the plaza for some time, trying to gain the support of more students either through participation in the protest or by putting additional signatures on the petition they would later deliver to the Board of Regents.

 "Education is under attack, what do we do?" one student shouted into a megaphone.
"Stand up, fight back," the protestors answered.

The protestors left the plaza around 12:45 p.m. and marched down the street, holding signs and chanting.

"No fee hikes! No furloughs!" one student's amplified megaphone voice said.
"Chop from the top!" the other protestors answered.

When asked what they meant by "chop from the top," Tom Leary, member of the PSA, clarified that they don't literally mean "chop."

"It means instead of hiking fees for students and focusing budget cuts and furloughs on the less paid educational workers to cover the hole in the budget, the pay cuts should come from the Board of Regents themselves, whom get paid over $200 thousand a year," he said. "The Chancellor of the Board gets paid over $500 thousand annually."

As the protestors made their way to the Trinity Building, Karla Drenner, State Representative for DeKalb County, briefly stopped to offer her words of encouragement.
"Come back again," she said. "That's exactly what you need to do- keep coming back. You all are the voice of thousands of other college students, so keep it up."

Upon arriving at the Trinity Building, the Assistant Secretary to the Board of Regents met the group outside the door with a couple of Capitol Police Officers. The assistant informed them that the meeting of the Board of Regents was open to the public, but they would not be allowed to directly turn their petition to the board while the meeting was occurring.

One PSA member gave a brief testimony of how heavily the fee hikes had affected her.
"$250 may not sound like much to some people, but for a college student like me, it's unthinkable," she testified.

The Chancellor of the Board of Regents is among the highest paid of American government jobs of all time.

This protest was the second demonstration conducted by the Progressive Student Alliance against the fee hikes imposed by the Board of Regents.

If you would like to be a part of next month's demonstration, look for fliers later this month. The Progressive Student Alliance also sets up a booth in the Library Plaza often, and members running the table will give more information on fighting the fee hikes.